“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”  Hebrews 13:8

Life is full of change that we have to go through.  Nobody likes some of the changes that we have to go through, though some change is wonderful.  Change is not all bad.  It can be trans-formatively good.  But change messes up our sense of equilibrium.  Chick Sell in his book Transitions, said this:

“An adult transition is like traveling from one island to another.  We leave solid ground in order to move on.  Usually, we are vulnerable while traveling between islands.  Paul Tourneir describes the reaction to that in-between time as the ‘anxiety of the middle way.’  Life has moments when we are like a trapeze artist swinging high above the crowd.  He stuns the audience by letting go one bar to seize another.  Between the bars, he is precariously afloat in midair.  The audience gasps as he dangles on nothing but his fading momentum.  His life depends on his ability to grab hold of the bar swinging toward him.  Between the letting go and the grabbing on, there is no turning back.  This middle is sort of no place…The Bible sees all of life as a pilgrimage.  God is the only certain ground…Abraham endured because he walked by faith.”

This loss-feeling in that middle ground in change is hard.  The loss comes in many forms.  Our bodies change.  We experience physical loss.  I can no longer tomahawk dunk a basketball.  Of course, I made only forty percent of the dunks I attempted in college.  I was two for five. Physical capacity loss is what we face in aging.  We also face relational loss.  That is hard. 

People we love die.  I can no longer hang out with my dad, so nourishing to me until his death. People move away.  Good friends.  Change and loss take up many forms throughout life.  A job, our routine, a season of life.  Andi and I went to 67 basketball games from November through early March one year chasing our dear children with three kids playing varsity and junior varsity and some nights, both in their season of basketball.  Seasons of life come and go.  We miss the former seasons.  A guy told me in response to my query about how his dad was that, “Well Eric, his world keeps getting smaller and smaller.”  But, what if we liked the bigger world?  How do we face change with a smile at the future along with with lady wisdom in Proverbs 31?  

How do we negotiate change and still maintain confidence in our future?  How do we rest in our Lord in the midst of circumstances bringing us to restlessness?  What ought be our focus? This morning, let’s go two directions.  First, I want to tell you where to place our focus, our gaze, in the midst of life change.  I will give you the thesis first, and then argue for it from thescriptures.  Secondly, I want to tell you about our future here at Calvary Baptist Church and tell you about what we will consider together in this month of March.

What gives stability in the midst of life’s changes?  Knowing the God who never changes is our stability in the face of life’s alternations.  It is the people who know their God who are the best at negotiating change in life, and for good reason.  Or to say it with the songwriter, “When all around my soul gives way, He then is all my hope and stay.”  There is a solid rock upon which to stand in the midst of life’s changing sands.  And isn’t it true they come in life? 

We come to God’s Word this morning.  According to Isaiah 40:6, it stands forever, settled and eternal.  We can rely on that.  Our home we built in West Virginia was off the side of a mountain with a severe declining pitch.  It had 144 square feet of foundation, poured basement walls and poured floor.  They had to put spherical pylons across the back of the pour so that the displaced weight from the front, leaning over the hill, would hold it.  It stood fast.  So it is with the Word of God, “All flesh is grass and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.  The grasswithers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it; surely the people are grass.  The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.”  Isaiah 40:6-8.

Grasping a hold of God’s eternal Word is a great head start into negotiating change well. Notice with me three glories from our Almighty God that bring fortitude when our lives fill with transition and change.  Here are three glimpses of who is most helpful. 

I. Our immortal God is eternally self-existent and independent.  Exodus 3:13-14 “Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you.’ And they ask me, ‘What is his name?’  What shall I say to them?”  God said to Moses, “I am who I am.”  The great I am.  God’s name.  I am.  I exist.  I exist unrelated to dependence upon any other.  I am self-existent.  I have always been.  I will always be.  I exist in relation to myself.  I am eternal.  I am immortal.  I have no beginning.  I have no ending.  There is no end to his wisdom.  Or as Mrs. Edwards would say, “He is infinite upon infinite.”  The apostle Paul notes He is “the blessed and only sovereign, the King of Kings and Lord of lords,who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen orcan see.”  I Timothy 6:15-16.

He is not a mere mortal.  He will not die.  He is immortal.  When my father on earth died, it was a grievous blow.  He faced his end.  It was tough.  I was there when he breathed his last.  It was over…on earth.  In that moment, I was drawn out to our Father in heaven, eternal in the heavens, immortal, invisible.  In the midst of the change we face, that gives robust meaning to the Hobby Lobby’s Green family’s commercial with that adage, “God’s got this.”  Who is the God who’s “got this”?  It is Almighty God who is immutable!  He does not change.

(Glimpse #2) II. Our unchanging God is unique in His settled character and constant purpose.  Numbers 22-24, 23:19.

In the book of Numbers, Balaam, a Mesopotamian prophet, was hired by Balak, the King of Moab to curse Israel.  After the conquest of Jericho, the fear of God, the fear of Yahweh, the great I am, afflicted all of the neighboring peoples.  They were afraid of the powerful God of the Israelites.  In chapter 22 of Numbers, Balak hires Balaam to curse Israel. 

Numbers 22:5-6, “Behold, a people has come out of Egypt.  They cover the face of the earth, and they are dwelling opposite me.  Come now, curse this people for me, since they are too mighty for me.”

The Moabites were scared to death.  The King went through great measures to get this prophet

to come and curse Israel.  And so, Balaam came for this errand to curse Israel.  God spoke to

him on the way through, of all things, his donkey.  At one point, the donkey resisted the trip

and Balaam beat the donkey with three strikes.  Numbers 22:28 says, “Then the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey, and she said to Balaam, ‘What have I done to you that you have struck me these three times?’” 

The donkey, of course, had seen the angel of the Lord standing in the way and laid down on the road.  Numbers 22:31 says, “Then the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way, with his drawn sword in his hand.  And he bowed down and fell on his face.”

So, when Balaam got to Balak in Moab, what began as an errand to curse Israel, was overridden by the Lord’s sovereignty.  Balaam ended up blessing Israel on three separate occasions. 

In the middle of what ended up as the second declared blessing upon Israel, Balaam says this in Numbers 23:19: “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind.  Has he said, and will he not do it?  Or has he spoken, and will be not fulfill it?”

Here Balaam accents the settled character and constant purpose of God.  He notes, that he is nothing like fickle humanity.  He is in a class by himself.  He is unique.  There is only one in that class.  But like no one else, he is constant in who He is.

Have you ever over heard a wife being asked about her husband and what it is like to relate to him and then, listened for the answer?  She might say something like, “Well, it depends on the day.  Did UK basketball win last night?  Has his day been ok at work?  Did his boss call him in?  Is he happy about something?  He’s moody.  You just never know.  Dr. Jekyl, then Mr. Hyde.”  

Balaam’s point, and it is so helpful in the midst of change, is that God is nothing like that and that makes Him super reliable, because you know what the person is like in whom you are trusting.

III. God is faithful, fixed, and established and worthy of our trust.  Think of James 1:17 “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”

Time used to be traced on sun dials in which shifts of the shadows would trace the course of the sun.  There is no shift or change in our Lord.  He is not this way in the morning and this way in the afternoon.  The is no variableness in His consistency.  He is settled and fixed in His person.   And this settled fixed person is faithful to His Word and to His people who trust in Him.  Indeed Great is Thy Faithfulness!  New morning mercies.  In the midst of change and flux where everything on our sun dial is moving around, not Him, not our great God!

We can trust Him because of the settled and fixed nature of His person, His work and His decree.   In the midst of the flux, the best thing we can do is to lay hold of Him, no variation there.  No shifting shadows there.  Just a reality that is certain upon which we can trust. 

Therefore, come what may in life, the people who know their God revealed in Jesus Christ are going to be fine.

Now, let me talk to you about today.  Today is the first Sunday of my tenth year as the pastor of Calvary Baptist Church.  I love you.  You have been good and kind to me, for which Andi and I are very grateful.  The end of every pastor’s tenure eventually comes.  My end is now within sight.  God willing, I will celebrate the finish of my ten years at the start of next March 2027.

The desire of my heart is to finish well.  I want what is best for Calvary Baptist Church.  My thinking has been greatly influenced by a book I read before I ever came here.  It is a book entitled Next by William VanDerbloemen and Warren Bird.  Their thesis is that every leader is an interim leader who prepares the role for the leader to follow him.  Great leaders are called to conduct their leadership so that the next guy following the leader is in better shape with a healthy organism that heads into an even better future.  I have consciously conducted myministry here at Calvary along those lines since I began. 

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In the course of my search to find an associate pastor to serve here at Calvary, God’s sovereign hand has been made evident.  While I have spearheaded the search for an associate, it has been a collaborative effort that has involved conversations and correspondence with my network, evangelical seminary placement offices, pastors and leaders at key gospel ministries, conversations with church consultants and recruiters, upper tier leaders in seminaries and a Bible Institute, along with group conversations with our Deacon body.   All of this has taken place since 2020.  God has brought us together to a moment that bears the distinguishing marks of God’s direction for our future.  It is a conviction that has grown on us and we want to share it with you this morning.

One glory of this good place at Calvary is the generations across the ages that make up our church family.  We love our mature saints.  Rock solid folk.  We also love the younger adults and families.  We are in the middle of a bit of a baby boom.  Our new nursery is sweet.  It is also refreshing to have a fresh and younger voice in the mix for our pastoral team.  We set out to recruit a younger associate pastor with some experience, good training, and with our doctrinal convictions.  I was thirty years old in 1989 when I accepted the call to be the senior pastor in Lansing, Michigan.  Pastor Galen Call was 26 years old when he became the pastor at Calvary. 

Our leadership began to dream about adding a younger man to our mix here.  We wanted someone who could come and serve our body in thinking through and leading adult Discipleship.  We anticipated his oversight of the present forms of discipleship that we are using at Calvary, with a view toward a new vision that he would instill and enact into our good future. 

The timing of this extraordinary development was like this:  At the end of 2020, I circulated a draft of a Job Description for such an associate.  Then COVID hit and we were thinking other leadership thoughts while seeking to hold the assembly together through the uncertainties of that season.   In November of 2022 we refined the job description and reflected upon Calvary’s historic appreciation for the preaching of the Word of God.  We valued this associate having developed some facility in preaching.  So in thinking about the future, we also wanted as well to recruit a preacher.  We appreciated what the recruitment of a young preacher meant to the progress and development of our church plant at Center Point Church. 

At a decisive meeting, one decisive for me, in November of 2023, I made a presentation to the Deacons on what it would take to replace the flooring in and around the auditorium, rip out the pews in the base of the auditorium and replace them with theater seating, reupholster the balcony pews and the pews in the lower levels under the wings of the balcony in the rear of the auditorium.  It was a $360,000 proposition.  It was met with a tepid response by our Deacon body.  At my request, they have always been a group given to advise me and offer consent to my ideas. 

Godly Dan Jackson, offered an editorial that burned into my conscience.  To summarize, he charged me to keep thinking about our church’s future and to think about succession.  He spoke about how churches face a big dip when the pastor leaves.  People leave and ministry falls down.  Giving falls off.  He spoke of the wisdom of negotiating a future where the church was prepared and that God would allow a seamless transition.  He concluded, “That would be so much more valuable for our future.”  He urged me with his comments to think thirty years ahead, instead of more short-term thoughts about the immediate future.  I was additionally influenced by Dr. Mark Jobe, president of Moody Bible Institute.   He charged me to regard age and influence and the future.  He told me that my wheelhouse as a sixty-six-year-old pastor, my wheelhouse of influence was to those folks who are ten years older than me, and ten years younger than me.  If we are thinking about a viable future for Calvary, if we are thinking about building into a future with those in their twenties and thirties, you have to keep thinking about recruiting staff that is younger, and near your target for a healthy future.  Some churches grow older and die; first literally, and then in ministry.  We want no part of that for Calvary.

Dan Jackson’s feedback and what I was being told by those advising me, like Dr. Jobe,  re-energized our search for an associate.  One difficulty in the recruitment of an associate to begin working alongside a sixty-six-year senior pastor is their question of what will happen to me in a few years when he is gone.  “Early in my new tenure, with Eric out of the picture, what will that mean for me, the last hire on this staff?” 

From January to September in 2024, we courted, vetted, and explored a future with a fine young man.  He even preached here one Sunday, unknown to the body, in both Sunday services in the midst of the discussion.  When we got to the point of inviting him in to meet the Deacons on our way to a candidacy, another church where he had been an intern, spoke to him about leading a church plant and he declined our invitation.  Upon receiving this fine young man’s decline, we reached out with fresh inquiry on posting boards at Dallas Theological Seminary, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and reached out to seminary faculty and administrators involved in training the next generation of leaders.  In late 2024 and into 2025, we conducted a discussion with a young man who had graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary.  The discussion started to mature and several of our Deacons listened to his preaching.  They heard a few of his sermons.  They came to me and urged me not to move ahead with the discussion with this man.  They felt that the quality of this good brother’s preaching was lacking and could not see the potential of a strong pulpit ministry in the future.   Recruiting, pounding the network, and conversations with others and potential candidates for the associate’s position continued.  Many of you have prayed.  Several of you have made suggestions.  I have listed to messages preached and gone through your suggestions and reviewed messages and ran out some references. 

That leads us to the fall of 2025.  Our Deacons and I have been praying about this whole process.  A potential candidate surfaced from a great church where he has served since graduating from college.  He had gone through their seminary and their internship program and had been recruited to stay on staff.  Another of our godly Deacons recommended that we explore this associate’s position with him.  And so, we did. 

It did not take long in anyone’s conversation with him before we collectively realized we had come across a blue-chip candidate in his mid-thirties.  He is in full stride in a strategic associate’s position where he is cultivating faithfulness.  But, in the midst of the conversation about his gifts, his calling, his future and our future, he suggested how happy and settled he was in his current associate’s position.  He said that he was not interested in a lateral move.  As I received that comment from him, I began in that moment to wonder what we could construe to keep this discussion going.  Here is an able man.  Here is a trained seminarian with years of experience, who is in a PhD program in preaching with a gifted mentor in that preaching chair.  Importantly, he aligns with us theologically.  Just as a side note, our fathers before us here at Calvary forged a doctrinal statement regarding the end times that envisions from the scripture a millennial reign of Jesus Christ in an earthly kingdom that is preceded by the pre-tribulational rapture of the church.  In 1980, Eternity Magazine had a cover article describing the center of evangelical (gospel) faith in America.  The picture was Culbertson Hall from Moody Bible Institute situated right next to Davidson Hall which is the center and historic building on Dallas Theological Seminary’s campus.  Main street, it was entitled.  It was an emblem of the center of gospel Christianity’s thought in 1982 (premillennial faith, including the snatching away of the church in the staged coming of Jesus Christ at the end of history).  Well, what is obvious today, especially to those at the forefront of recruiting a staff member to serve at this good place with our theological convictions, what is obvious is that the streets have changed in fifty-five years, though as we read earlier, God’s Word never changes.  Our convictions about future things are rivaled today by other views being taken. 

Seeking to pursue the conversation with this fine man, I thought of the concept of a Senior Pastor in waiting.  I shared the concept with our Deacons as we kept the conversation going.  The more we thought and prayed about this concept, the more we embraced it.  We sought counsel from seasoned pastors and leaders on succession coaching.  We test drove the idea.

We shared the concept with our potential candidate.  He inquired as to the origin of the idea.  The analogy I gave him was the succession plan for a college football team at the Ohio State University.  When their veteran coach Urban Meyer announced that his last season would be his last season there, they promoted Ryan Day to be their Head Coach in waiting.  They went through a year together and then Urban left.  After our candidate thought about the concept, he enthusiastically continued the discussion with us.  He even anonymously visited Calvary with his family on December 21.  His wife came and spoke to our ladies on February 7 in their Day in the Word.

That brings us to today.  It is a day to which God has brought us.  It is a good day.  We want you to pray about it with us.  We want you to participate in this month as we introduce more of the concept next week and introduce our candidate as we go through this month.  You will meet him in person on a day of candidacy on March 29^th.  We will present him as our Senior Pastor in waiting.  Block out the weekend of March 29^th.  We will vote on the future of what we hope to be the next thirty-five years at Calvary in inviting him to come to be our Senior Pastor in waiting.  We will be voting on our next and eventual Senior Pastor on that day.

Change appears on the horizon for Calvary.  If God finishes putting all of this together, you should expect that throughout the next year this candidate would emerge more and more in leadership capacities and preaching in this transitional season.  I will be driven in this new season by John the Baptist’s retort to the critics questioning him about why so many who were following Him had moved their allegiance to Jesus Christ, John said, “He must increase, I must decrease.”  We are on the cusp of what we are praying and hoping will be the smoothest pastoral transition Calvary has ever known. 

Today we brief you on a developing discussion that has been going on, in a collaborative effort with the Deacons, over the past few years.  We have all been involved.  We are praying for a good transition to a great future with a young, vibrant, capable leader whom God has brought our way.  This probably seems publicly abrupt.  Privately, the way it ought to have been, it has been simmering in the crock pot.  It crystallized in the last three months in extraordinary ways.  The time is now right to tell the story over the next three weeks.  Because God is who He is, we can all negotiate this change with wisdom and grace and gratitude.  God is immutable, He never changes.  We look unto Him.   We’ll rehearse this remarkable story all month long. 

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